Promising the Sky
1708 Gallery | Richmond, VA | 2022
Sandy Williams IV: Promising the Sky
July 1 – August 14, 2022
Promising the Sky looks at how collective memories, aspirations, and actions–shared from past generations and envisioned by those to come–can manifest a more equitable economic, social, and political landscape in the United States. This exhibition is a constellation of photographs, bronze sculptures, research, text-based works, documentation from previous performances, and discursive programs; it centers around a cinematic restaging of their recent skywriting performance 40 ACRES: Chimborazo Park.
On May 21, 2022 Williams worked with a skywriting crew to trace the dimensions of a 40-acre plot over what is now known as Chimborazo Park in Richmond, Virginia. The skywriting performance was a public acknowledgment that was briefly visible for miles and a physical metaphor for the ways in which the legend of reparations, "40 Acres and a Mule," still holds an invisible presence in our atmosphere.
Through Promising the Sky, the presentation of artworks, printed broadsides and other forms of research, interviews, and open questions visible throughout the exhibition, Williams is establishing a living archive–one that unfolds, uncovers, and recovers histories in the present moment. While this exhibition focuses on the work at Chimborazo Park, and other significant sites in Richmond, it also ushers in the cultivation of an archive that is not beholden to a conventional format or site and extends from the following premise. The 40 Acres Archive focuses on the post Civil War Reconstruction era, and the structural decisions made during this period. The project looks specifically at the history of Freedmen communities, where newly emancipated people congregated and began to build communities at the end of the Civil War. The success of these new communities would have been vital to rebuild in a way that supported equality, after centuries of slavery and displacement. Therefore, understanding the instrumentalized destruction of these communities, the federal failures of Reconstruction, and the unfulfilled promises of reparations is essential if trying to understand many of today’s inequalities. The 40 Acres Archive is building language and imagery around these conversations in order to plot a more positive way forward.
Special thanks to Ryan Doherty!
This project is supported by Reynolds Gallery; Oakwood Arts, where Sandy is an artist in residence through support from CultureWorks; Afrikana Film Festival; Arts & Letters Creative Co; the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation; Trilobite Arts; and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
